Manto Review - Getting to know Manto

Suhansid Srikanth

Nandita Das Manto opens with a girl child who is barely 10 or 12 being pimped to three rich men for an outing. The story proceeds unconventionally and ends on an abstract note. Quite later, we get that it is a short story written by Manto himself.

Within the duration of around 120 minutes.. Manto, instead of being an account of the personality's life.. tries to capture the essence of his state of mind when the partition of India - Pakistan happens. The most crucial years of life comes to as vignettes! But be it a silence or a stare.. every single moment that Nandita Das shows you leaves an impact!

The screenplay is conceived by accommodating five of Manto's most important short stories within the film. They play out in the film as individual stories on their own yet they tells you something about the politics then.. about the partition.. the possibility of violence that could intrude into mind of anyone.. questioning the concept of independence.. people being stranded in the middle of nowhere despite achieving freedom.

And the beauty is how the transformations from one world to other happens. For the major part of the film.. the film holds its conflict on the case claimed over Manto for obscenity in his short story, 'Cold Meat'. The issue is pretty much even today given the ruthless choppings Censor do with our films. And irony laughs when you see 'Smoking / Drinking Kills' disclaimer at the corner of the screen whenever Manto smokes or drinking!

Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Saddaq Hassan Manto delivers one of his career best performances. It is neither just a mere physical resemblance that you get in most of the biopics nor the factual representations from birth to death. We get to see very intimate parts of Manto's life.. where Manto himself looses his faith, questions his beliefs.. incidents that turned him into who he is.. and Nawaz gets into the very skin of the anger and frustration Manto has gone through!

The destruction that happens to Manto is very subtly sketched. We don't see him aging from scene to scene.. but the peer pressure that he faces in publishing every work of him is painstakingly brought out. The vulnerable shades of Manto when he is a helpless father who can't take care of his own daughter's health are portrayed without dropping off as melodrama!

The internal struggle that Manto has gone through between his art, family and politics begins to eat up his life. The stories he write stands for the time he lives. He struggles for the literature to shed off fake fictions and embrace the reality! And he is equally concerned about Faiz calling his work not standing up to literary standards as much as people calling it obscene!

Sneha Khanwalkar's soundtrack is quite a stunner. Songs are more blended into the narrative to give us an idea of the time period.. what's happening inside Manto's head! The rustic feel in the scores compliments the impressive tones of period captured by Kartik Vijay. So is the editing by Sreekar Prasad. The editing hardly comes to your mind as you watch the film but it very effectively takes you back and forth between the real and fictional world of Manto.

All said.. the film.. as it ends.. you can't stop being haunted by the unbelievable relevance Manto holds even today! The issues he fight for are still there.. The oppression is still there.. The fascism is still there!

Bottom line

Nandita Das's second directorial, 'Manto' is a honest work that explores Manto's conscience and has the finest & most intense performance of Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The voice it speaks out.. and the problems it voices out for are still very much relevant!